Sucker
A Novel
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2.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Succession meets Bad Blood in this sharp-toothed satire of Silicon Valley and the 1 percent • The black-sheep son of an industrial tycoon starts working for a tech pioneer who's running a biomedical startup selling nothing less than immortality, only to uncover the horrifying truth at the heart of her sublime promises.
"Exceptional, horrifically hilarious, and deeply original.” —Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here
Chuck Gross would like nothing more than to prune himself from his family tree. He’s already clipped his name, turning Charles Grossheart, Jr.—son of a billionaire labor exploiter, weapons manufacturer, and climate change denier—into ordinary good-guy Chuck, the “self-made” proprietor of an up-and-coming punk label. But when Daddy threatens to cut him off, Chuck is forced to get a “real job”—and conveniently, an old college friend has just swept back into his life with the perfect opportunity.
Famed Harvard dropout and biotech darling Olivia Watts says she is on the verge of totally reinventing the field of medicine, but when Chuck signs on, he soon discovers that things at the vast Kenosis campus are not quite how they appear. Secret labs, vanished employees, and mutated test subjects seem to be as impossible as they are sinister. Is Olivia simply a scammer, or does her technology threaten to usher humanity toward a far bloodier fate? Moreover, does Chuck—who has never accomplished anything without the aid of Daddy’s money—stand a chance of stopping her? Daniel Hornsby hilariously skewers the insatiable hungers of the ultrarich in a novel that no one will be able to resist sinking their teeth into.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos was sentenced for fraud; her fictionalized counterpart, Olivia Watts of Kenosis, is much more successful, if no less deceitful, in this gonzo, slow-burning speculative thriller from Hornsby (Via Negativa). Charles Gross is a record publisher whose financial viability rests more on his being an heir of the heavily wealthy Grossheart family than on his own music acumen. When he needs to demonstrate his entrepreneurship to his suspicious father, he hooks up with Olivia, a college friend whose startup promises amazing nanotech biomedical monitoring. All is not well with Kenosis, however, a fact curious Charles begins to uncover both on his own and with the help of a company whistleblower. But can he convince his father of the company's malevolent conspiracy before Olivia puts her hooks into the senior Grossheart? Hornsby toys with the reader through tantalizing glimpses of Olivia's rise to startup fame and grounds the story's wilder elements, including the bloody secrets Kinosis hides, in Charles's struggles to emerge from his father's shadow. Readers will likely guess Olivia's ties to the supernatural long before they are revealed, but that doesn't detract from the entertainment. This is sharp-fanged Silicon Valley satire.
